Around midnight it happened, the sudden stillness that comes with every Fourth of July. It wasn't that the premature, renegade, backyard fireworks had stopped, though they mostly had. It wasn't that I hadn't heard a firetruck in several hours. What I noticed was the wondrous silence that comes through the open windows only a few times a year, the quiet that descends when everybody else goes "to the lake." The steady, background hum of city life suddenly suspends itself like a switch has gone off, and those few of us left behind have the city to ourselves. Oh, how I love it! How can the very lack of noise be so discernible? Why don't I, every other day, hear (and resent) the daily cacophony that has suddenly gone missing? And where is it now, all that quotidian noise? Does it, by definition, follow those who hightailed it out of town? Or does it simply disappear as all of us take a breath and celebrate what it is to be American amidst our triumphs and imperfections?
Of course, it would be splendid to have gone "to the lake" myself this holiday weekend, but the tradeoff is that I get to enjoy in peace the lake that is virtually in my own back yard, sharing it with those few others who have chosen to stay behind. I will garden before the sun gets too hot, and wander over to my favorite local parade, enjoying the uncrowded streets and the collective neighborliness of my fellow stay-at-homes. I will sit out the dusky evenings on the back porch listening to the silence and thinking about this country - it's past, its present and its future - how lucky I am to be here now, and the responsibility such privilege implies. I will vow to do more and better for the world in which I live and forgive myself for not always getting it right. Mostly, I will enjoy the city's miraculous peace made palpable.
Happy Fourth of July, everyone, wherever you are.